Now Playing: Full Frontal

I’d never heard of this Steve Soderberg flick but I found it on the bookshelf of the summer cottage we were renting and I just watched it while waiting for my delayed plane home from Toronto.

Forget the tagline: it’s a lot more subtle than “chance meetings, steamy interludes, sizzling secrets” would lead you to believe. A lot more confusing, too. Soderberg doesn’t like exposition and it took me one and a half viewings (the plane was really late) to separate the movie within a movie from the “real” action. (There’s actually a movie within the movie within a movie. It stars Brad Pitt. Pitt’s celebrity is a running joke in this movie.) It doesn’t help that the only opening titles are from the phony movie. It’s almost as if the director is challenging you to figure out what’s what, but I enjoyed the challenge. Fascinating and innovative, though, as are all of Soderberg’s movies.

There’s a really fun turn by Nicky Katt as a self-absorbed, blood-drinking, actor playing Hitler in the off-off-off Broadway production of “The Sound and the Fuhrer.” David Hyde Pierce is so good I almost forgot “Frasier.” This might be one of Soderberg’s funniest movies. Look for a flashback from “The Limey.”

Sodden thought: Netflix needs an “add all movies from this director” button.